《Pull Request》


 RAM

    With a barely audible click, I slid the last connector into place. After weeks with no progress the stupid thing was working again. Spending a little extra on an official repair kit had been worth it. Even with all my tools I could only go so far with the, sometimes literal, garbage they sold at the market.


    As the screen lit up I leaned back and admired my work. Brain implants were tricky shit at the best of times. And after a bullet went through said brain definitely wasn¡¯t the best time. But luckily I didn¡¯t have to worry about any grey matter attached to the machinery. The single enhanced eye and the fancy little computer that ran it were held in place by a few clamps on my desk. The connections that were normally attached nerves and brain were instead wired into my computer.


    While the implant rebooted and fed its data to the computer I got up and gathered the rest of the augments. Seven pieces of cybernetics formerly belonging to one Simon Northridge. I had learned surprisingly little about him despite my efforts. His implants toed an annoying line between cheap because they were crap and cheap because they were actually good.


    Not enough computing power to store any excess files so there were barely any sensors or logs from sensors. Deliberately because he¡¯d gotten models that didn¡¯t have subscriptions trading data for updates. No easy access to the onboard computers. Not because they had security features but because the manufacturers didn¡¯t want people able to fix or personalise anything. Crap gear with downsides that were upsides.


    Simon had been a smart fellow. Not smart enough, since he was dead, but there wasn¡¯t a lot of outsmarting to be done against a bullet. And it showed in the data I had pulled so far. I always liked to work my way up and leave the head for last. So I had started with the replacement joints. An ankle in his left leg and knee in his right.


    That was fucking weird. Ankle replacements? Sure. Some people liked those for running and jumping higher. Knee replacements were obvious, that entire joint was a shitshow. But who the hell replaces one in each leg? Someone with a very specific unhealthy routine apparently. Simon had worked in a warehouse and always walked the same routes, lifted the same way and stressed the same joints. Implants like that were sold in pairs but when you were lifting them out of the crates before they ever got to a store that didn¡¯t matter. And he was a smart fellow. He knew well enough not to take anything someone could be bothered to go looking for.


    I¡¯d found records once I knew where to look that told me he¡¯d worked in that same warehouse for thirty years. It had been owned by three different companies in that time. They came and went but the tracks he wore into the floor, walking the same path each day, only got deeper.


    My own legs had long been replaced and not because my joints were failing. I had the chance to get better ones so I took it. Once you started making some connections how much actual money you had mattered less. I had never been rich and if the bank ever took a look at my accounts they¡¯d probably think I was barely scraping by. But I could trade favours for gear that I¡¯d never be able to buy. Being able to get a job done was more valuable than cash and contacts meant more than friendships.


    Moving on, there was all the gut garbage that I didn¡¯t care for. Augments to the liver and kidneys and some machine on the stomach that I had to throw out because no amount of cleaning could get the smell off. The coroners on TV could never get enough of these. All sorts of data to help them determine cause of death, figure out if there¡¯d been foul play and point a finger at whoever had done it.


    But I figured I had a pretty good idea of what caused his death and it was a lot better for my health to wonder about who and why. And I didn¡¯t have the degrees I needed to figure out what he ate based on what molecules his liver processed anyway. Except the ethanol, but I didn¡¯t need that to tell me someone drank.


    It all told me very little about who he was as a person. And that¡¯s what I cared about. Some other guy a thousand years in the future could unearth Simon¡¯s house and scrape the insides of the tins to see what he ate. I wanted to know who he was. What he liked. The ways he mattered. And the second to last implant told me a whole lot more about that.


    A highly modified, but not actually artificial, larynx. I had thought of his augments as cheap before but that had been a whole different story. Very fancy work and official too. Serial number etched in and everything. A delicate little computer that kept track of all it could to make sure things were working properly.


    Simon Northridge had known how to sing. Pretty well at that. The computer tracked the sounds produced by the still flesh vocal chords and showed he could hold a tune. And he¡¯d cared enough about being able to do it properly that he¡¯d paid a huge amount to have his throat fixed while keeping as much flesh and blood as possible so it would still be him doing the singing and not a synthesised voice.A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.


    I had no idea what had damaged his voice to make it need fixing and I didn¡¯t care too much. I had the really important info. Simon loved singing. And since he mostly kept to himself except for a few drinking buddies and work colleagues it seemed he sang for himself.


    I wouldn¡¯t have his implants for much longer. Once I was done looking over the eye the whole lot would be traded away. But this little piece of information would stay with me. I didn¡¯t know if that was something he ever wanted shared. And if it wasn''t, hopefully he¡¯d forgive me. It wasn¡¯t like my little collection would last forever. Eventually it would all be forgotten.


    For now though there was a little piece of his story that had been dug back up and I liked to think most people would appreciate someone putting a little effort into knowing who they were. His drinking buddies would probably have a toast for him and tell stories, but sometimes there were things the dead could tell you that the living never would.


    I assembled the pieces on my desk around the eye that was still being processed. That part always took way too much time. There was no standardisation between companies so if I wanted to talk to a new implant I had to test every protocol to see if it responded. These parts together were probably good enough to exchange for some upgrades so I¡¯d be able to get the work done faster in the future.


    While I was waiting I spun my chair to face the rest of the room and stretched. I had been prepared to go at this all night but it ended up only taking a few hours to get the connections working. There was some sort of science to it but I didn¡¯t know how any of that worked. I just plugged things into each other and watched the output for a reaction. There was only one cable that actually mattered. The rest just needed to be tricked into thinking they were connected to a person.


    You didn¡¯t have to be a genius to do it. But you did have to be careful and determined. Plenty of people were one or the other but not many were both. And a lot of the people that were weren¡¯t interested in this kind of thing so I got the job.


    While I liked to complain about it, the deal I had wasn¡¯t so bad. I got told where the body should be and what I had to bring back. Then I got paid for it and anything extra they had on them was mine. I didn¡¯t even have to go grave robbing or dumpster diving. The Worms and Rats of the world could handle that. Only good clean autopsies for the Vulture.


    There had been a bit less work recently and it was starting to show in my room. Some of the shelves were looking pretty bare. A lot of the spare parts I had left were low level stuff that wouldn¡¯t get me much. The sort of thing that was better off getting sold than bartered. And that was pretty bad. During times like these I had to get less picky about what I accepted. It was always better when I could come looking for jobs I liked the sound of rather than avoiding only those I really didn¡¯t like.


    After a few minutes of cursing my luck, a ping pulled me back to the desk. The program had found a match. For an operating system from a completely different company than the one that made the implant. About par for the course when you were working with stuff you might not technically own. It wasn¡¯t like the companies were in any position to complain. The only reason their tech could be interchanged so easily was because they stole from each other more than anybody else did.


    With the last barrier finally out of the way I quickly accessed the eyes folders. Most optical implants only replaced the eye itself. But this one had a whole computer attached which meant one of two things. Either an eye that could see and record beyond the visual range and needed an implant so the brain could understand what it was seeing, or something with a wireless connection to let people browse the internet with their mind. The eye would act as a screen and interface to show websites and visualise local networks.


    Seeing as the implant was still here it was almost certainly not a recorder. If Simon had a video of something he wasn¡¯t supposed to see it would have been taken. Since he had only been dead and the desecrating hadn¡¯t happened till I got there it had to be a network optic. Which probably meant Simon tried to access something he wasn¡¯t supposed to and paid the price. The poor man probably hadn¡¯t even known. Just tried to ping some machine he walked past that threw up warning signs to someone with an itchy trigger finger.


    I couldn¡¯t help smiling a little with excitement as I opened a window to show me the eyes view with its overlays. And stopped smiling at what I saw. A mess of icons all crammed to the side so they wouldn¡¯t block vision. Files, folders, apps and more just strewn about. Deliberate chaos I could work with. If someone made a mess to hide something it told me how much they cared about that thing. But a mess because someone couldn¡¯t be bothered just told me they were lazy and disorganised.


    With very little hope I looked for the two icons that represented the optics official log app and its default file directory. The first opened to reveal a few red error messages. The app was complaining about features being disabled and had warnings about problems caused by turning off logs and automatic updates. Sad but not unexpected. Those things got more and more demanding as time went on and most people found a way to turn off alerts. I rarely got logs from implants people had direct control over.


    The second opened to reveal an even worse mess than the desktop. In fact I saw a folder there labelled ¡®old desktop¡¯. It looked like whenever his vision got too crowded Simon just grabbed everything and threw it in here, then he started again.


    I leaned back and rubbed my eyes with a sigh. I wanted to know a little about this life. What he was like and if he had an interesting story to tell. It looked like if I wanted one I would have to do the other and that was not happening.


    ¡°Come on Simon. Couldn¡¯t you have worked with me here,¡± I muttered.


    And then, as if fortune were smiling at me, my own optics popped up a little alert. A message from The Dog. And that meant another body to retrieve. Hopefully the next guy would be a little more forthcoming.

 CACHE

    The Dog was, under almost any other circumstance, my least favourite kind of person. He was loud, annoying and always looking for the next thing. Something newer and shinier. As soon as his current obsession wasn¡¯t the hottest thing around anymore it got thrown out and forgotten.


    As a contact however he was great. Always up to date on whatever was happening anywhere. And always willing to talk, even if you didn¡¯t pay up first. He was careful enough not to let anything really valuable slip but I could usually stay up to date just by letting him talk my ear off for a while. After dealing with Simon''s clutter though I wasn¡¯t in the mood for long conversations.


    I set the implants I had been working on to standby and accepted the call.


    ¡°How¡¯s my favourite scavenger doing? Staying safe I hope? It¡¯s getting crazy out there you know. Did you see the news? Corps are laying into each other in the open. I heard they¡¯ve been calling in special agents from all their secret black sites. They¡¯ve got a bunch of-¡± Dog immediately started rambling away,


    ¡°Wow, that''s crazy. So did someone get caught in the crossfire or what? You know I don¡¯t get involved in that shit,¡± I interrupted.


    ¡°No no nothing like that,¡± he continued like he hadn¡¯t been cut off. ¡°What did I just say about staying safe? You know you¡¯d probably have a lot more friends if you spent half as much time talking to people before they die as you do looking through their files.


    ¡°But whatever. Business then. You¡¯re looking for Anthony Harper, recently murdered. He told a friend of his about his implants and now that someone''s ended that friendship for them they want them retrieved. He¡¯s down some sewer pipe over east. Not gang territory technically but close enough that my client doesn¡¯t want to go themselves.


    ¡°Got some nice shit on him too. Both eyes, onboard computer, swappable arms, whole bunch of that health monitoring garbage. Sounds nice right?¡±


    It did sound nice. It sounded great even. Another set of eye implants with processors like Simon had had would be great. And maybe someone who cared enough to monitor their health would keep their systems a bit more organised. But that was more nice tech in one place than usual. My usual hauls would be one of those on their own plus some cheaper implants. People who could afford all that didn¡¯t end up dumped in sewer pipes.


    ¡°Who killed this guy? That¡¯s a lot of gear to leave laying around. Can his ¡®friend¡¯ even afford all that?¡± I asked.


    ¡°I don¡¯t know and I don¡¯t want to know. Probably pissed off some idiot with a gun by looking at him funny. His body¡¯s still there after a day and a half so no one who cares. And the best part is, the client only wants the eyes and computer. Probably can¡¯t afford all that. So same deal as usual. You get me the part all nice and cleaned up and keep the rest. As I said, sounds nice right?¡±


    Now that did sound nice. Some people like Simon were smart about things, even if they still ended up dead. It sounded like Anthony had been stupid. All the money to set himself up with nice gear only to waste it walking somewhere he shouldn¡¯t have been.


    I looked over to the same empty shelves I¡¯d been thinking about earlier. Dogs clients had a bad tendency of being light on details but it usually went in my favour. They listed all the important implants to make sure he took their job seriously and ignored the run of the mill stuff people took for granted. I would probably be getting more out of this than what Dog had told me about. And that was already a lot.


    ¡°Alright. I¡¯ll take care of it. But don¡¯t try to rush me again. The last guy already took ages to work through. Cleaning up pulled implants isn¡¯t easy, you know.¡±


    ¡°Sure sure. Just don¡¯t waste time. Now about the-¡±


    ¡°Don¡¯t waste time right?¡±


    As soon as I confirmed that Dog had sent me a location, and before he could drag me back into corpo conspiracy theories, I hung up.


    <hr>


    I could never decide whether I liked walking through the city. In a few ways it looked good. There were signs all over the place of people trying their best to make themselves at home. There was graffiti and murals on the walls or decorations hung from the wires and cables between buildings. But sometimes the effort just made the failures look worse.


    As I walked away from my apartment I looked over the people selling from stalls in the street. Most of them I didn¡¯t recognise. They tended not to stick around terribly long. Regular stores tended to last longer but a few more of those had also closed down. Places I¡¯d never been in and now wouldn¡¯t get the chance to. I couldn¡¯t dig anything up about them either since the city deleted old records often.


    A lot of people who did work similar to mine liked to do that too to keep themselves hidden. They had fake identities, only used cash and made sure there was nothing identifiable on their implants. I did some of the same. You wouldn¡¯t catch me introducing myself as anything other than Vulture. No need to make myself easy to track. But if someone was rooting through your insides you probably weren¡¯t in a state to care about privacy anymore. Anything you hadn¡¯t told anyone or written down by then would be lost forever. Some of my friends would probably find it funny to hear me say that. They talked to a lot more people than I did.Reading on this site? This novel is published elsewhere. Support the author by seeking out the original.


    The line between the rest of the city and gang territory was obvious. From one alley to the next the people hiding in nooks and crannies disappeared. The gangs would patrol and kick out anyone that wasn¡¯t either with them or paying them.


    Here at the edge of their territory the streets changed hands often. You could never be sure who you¡¯d be running into unless you were in a gang yourself. For the average person it was probably safer to live and work deeper in. As long as your boss was paying their protection money there wouldn¡¯t be any trouble.


    I had no intention of spending long here. Pulling implants from the dead was easy as long as you weren¡¯t squeamish since you didn¡¯t have to worry about the body. That meant I could do my work quickly without damaging my goods. I¡¯d leave as soon as possible and clean them up once I was safely back home.


    Fortunately I had plenty of practice at this. I¡¯d left pretty early so the gangs weren¡¯t out on serious business, just a few patrols. They were loud on purpose to scare people away and didn¡¯t try very hard to spot anyone like me sneaking past them.


    I made my way a little further in until I found the right place. A large construction site with a bunch of open tunnels. Like a lot of the surroundings it was abandoned. I decided to head around the site and enter from the other side. The scaffolding from where I¡¯d approached looked way too damaged to climb through.


    Once I was in it was exactly as easy as I¡¯d hoped for. I hopped down one of the holes and didn¡¯t have to look far to find Anthony''s body. He wasn¡¯t looking that bad yet after only a bit over a day down there. Besides the bullet holes that is.


    And as expected it didn¡¯t take long to remove everything. This part of my work even others in the business didn¡¯t like to think about. Lots of my friends were fine taking a contract to kill some idiot, but they got a little pale thinking about cutting someone open. Not that I didn¡¯t understand them. I¡¯d like to be looked after after death. But Anthony here wouldn¡¯t be getting that so he¡¯d have to settle for having me pry into his life.


    This job really was a gold mine. All of the parts the Dog had listed were here and I packed them away safely. On top of that running a scanner over him also showed a few joint and muscle enhancements. They joined the important parts in the bag and I secured them to my back.


    Getting back out of the hole was just as easy since there were ladders set up from the construction work. I spared what was left of Anthony now a glance and hoped he didn¡¯t have anyone who might have wanted to bury him. Probably not or Dog wouldn¡¯t have taken the job. It wasn¡¯t smart to be around the bodies of people reported missing, just in case.


    Before I could leave, my nice profitable job decided to become a little difficult. The gate at the front of the construction site was carefully opened and three guys made their way in. I immediately jogged back and took shelter behind some barrels where they hopefully wouldn¡¯t see me watching them.


    They walked through the gate carefully and checked their surroundings. That was bad. People paying attention usually knew what they were doing. I couldn¡¯t tell what gang they were from at a glance. They wore casual clothes and had pistols out. The same kind of stuff anyone around here would have. If I could spot a gang tag I could at least guess how likely they were to start shooting.


    If the parts hadn¡¯t still been on Anthony I might have thought it was a trap. Someone kills him and waits for whoever comes to pick up the body. But a gang would have taken the parts and only left the body. Only corporations played the sort of games where they left the loot behind to make sure someone took the bait.


    Either someone had spotted me on my way in or I had really bad luck. And now these overeager mooks were here. You got guys like that sometimes. People who thought that if they just worked hard enough their boss might see their efforts. Crazy that a company job didn¡¯t beat that out of them before they turned to crime, but I guess gangs needed stupid grunts too.


    So here they were acting like proper security at the edge of gang territory. I would have preferred to stay hidden but they were coming further in. And they were between me and the exit so I wasn¡¯t likely to sneak out. I decided it would be better to make myself known than let them stumble over me.


    They might be smart enough not to start anything. Firing shots would draw attention and it was just as likely to be a rival gang as backup for them. Hoping for the best and preparing for the worst I kept my own gun ready but pointed at the ground as I called to them.


    ¡°Alright over here guys, let¡¯s talk about this,¡± I called. ¡°I¡¯m sure we can-¡±


    I pulled back as one of them whipped up his pistol and started taking shots at me. Swearing slightly I made sure there was as much scrap between me and them as possible.


    ¡°Hey, HEY! You really wanna have a gunfight over some spare parts? Just tell me what you¡¯re after, I''m sure we can work something out,¡± I shouted.


    They stopped shooting but no one answered. That was weird. Normally even the tryhards couldn¡¯t help themselves from talking shit. I¡¯d expected at least a few threats. But the quiet did mean that I could hear the footsteps of someone approaching.


    Thinking too hard in a situation like this was how other people got themselves cornered. I turned in the opposite direction from them and started sprinting, staying as low to the ground as I could. They started shooting again but nothing hit me as I dipped into the scaffolding.


    It was exactly as fragile as I had feared and I could hear everything creaking while I ran across some planks. But I didn¡¯t care about making noise anymore. Once I got to the other side I kicked a few beams on the way out. The gang grunts had started shouting behind me but they were drowned out as the entire structure collapsed.


    Making that kind of noise was the last thing I wanted to do on a job but sometimes you didn¡¯t get a choice. As far as things going south went, that hadn¡¯t been too bad. Talking things out didn¡¯t work that often so running was the next best thing to avoid a firefight.


    I kept running along more or less the path I¡¯d taken in. Those guys shouldn¡¯t be able to follow me quickly enough but there would be people coming to check out the noise. Even these parts of town weren¡¯t abandoned enough for buildings to collapse at random.


    Despite all that I couldn¡¯t help smiling as I jogged away. The bag I was carrying was worth a lot and I¡¯d have plenty of time to pick each piece apart.